Adolphe cannot restrain a nervous shudder.
“You can’t help laughing, you monster!”
“I laugh at your obstinacy.”
“I’ll go to-morrow to Madame de Fischtaminel’s.”
“Oh, go wherever you like!”
“What brutality!” says Caroline, rising and going away with her handkerchief at her eyes.
The country house, so ardently longed for by Caroline, has now become a diabolical invention of Adolphe’s, a trap into which the fawn has fallen.
Since Adolphe’s discovery that it is impossible to reason with Caroline, he lets her say whatever she pleases.
Two months after, he sells the villa which cost him twenty-two thousand francs for seven thousand! But he gains this by the adventure—he finds out that the country is not the thing that Caroline wants.
The question is becoming serious. Nature, with its woods, its forests, its valleys, the Switzerland of the environs of Paris, the artificial rivers, have amused Caroline for barely six months. Adolphe is tempted to abdicate and take Caroline’s part himself.